It’s that time of year, and another team has decided to fire their head coach after a disappointing season. The Vancouver Canucks have fired Willie Desjardins along with assistants Doug Lidster and Perry Pearn. The team finished last in the Pacific Division with a 30-43-9 record and will miss the playoffs for a second consecutive season.
After taking the Canucks to the playoffs in his first year in Vancouver, Desjardins has seen both the performance on the ice and his popularity in the city plummet recently. The former Calder Cup and WHL Champion has found success at every level of coaching until now, and will be considered for open jobs around the league again very shortly. Though his teams haven’t performed well the last two years, some may point to their construction more than his tactics as there have been very few success stories coming out of free agency or the trade market for the Canucks recently. Whether it is signing Loui Eriksson long-term, or drafting Jake Virtanen and then bouncing him up and down between leagues, there have been quite a few questionable moves from management in recent years.
Desjardins nonetheless hasn’t gotten the best out of this group and will pay the price for it. The Canucks will be in another prime lottery position, finishing second last in the league thanks to an eight-game losing streak to end the year. With new leadership behind the bench, and another high draft pick perhaps the franchise will buy into a real rebuild. At the deadline, they did well to acquire Nikolay Goldobin and Jonathan Dahlen for expiring contracts and will now attempt to find a new voice to lead the new direction. With just one year remaining on the contracts of the Sedin twins, the Canucks have a huge amount of salary coming off the books for 2018-19 and could be in fine shape in two year’s time.
Bob McKenzie of TSN was first to break the news that Desjardins had been relieved of his coaching duties.
Personally, I think Desjardins got a lot out of a marginal roster beset with a huge number of injuries. I believe it’s the wrong decision.
He did get quite a bit, considering the injuries, but I think his game management and obvious headbutts with management. He couldn’t call a timeout to save a life. He would use them at the worse times and not use them at even worse times. When it became obvious the team was not playoff bound and the youth movement was on, he continued to go to veteran AHLers vs. the young guys put in front of him (game 82 he played a Dman on the 4th versus a young guy Benning had called up).
I believe Willie was trying to win (which coach doesnt want to) but the young guys need to learn to cut their teeth and down the stretch would have been ideal.